2019 Health Care Conference

Alexis Bortniker is a partner and health care lawyer with Foley & Lardner LLP. Her practice focuses on transactional and regulatory matters with an emphasis on counseling health systems, hospitals, and other providers in managed care, alternative payment model implementation, and physician alignment strategies. She also represents health plans in network development and compliance matters, and advises health care clients with respect to mergers, acquisitions, affiliations, and strategic transactions. She is a member of the firm’s Health Care Industry Team and co-chair of the firm’s Health Care Transactions Group.

Amy Runge is the National Practice Leader for Moss Adams Long-Term Care Practice. She has provided accounting, auditing, and consulting services since 1986. She focuses on managing audits of senior living organizations, including continuing care retirement communities, retirement communities, skilled nursing facilities, assisted living facilities, as well as home health agencies, hospices, clinics, hospitals, foundations, religious organizations, voluntary health, and welfare organizations.

She has significant experience conducting audits in accordance with government auditing standards, the US Office of Management and Budget Uniform Administrative Requirements, cost principles, audit requirements for federal awards, the US Department of Housing and Urban Development audit guide, and the accounting and audit guide for health care organizations issued by the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants.

Services she provides to clients include financial statement preparation and analysis, internal control studies and system reviews with recommendations for system improvements, tax-exempt bond financing consents and agreed-upon procedures, and agreed-upon procedures for governmental entities and other organizations including contract reviews and grant and regulatory compliance. Additional services include preparation and review of organizational budgets and forecasts preparing, accounting and administrative policy and procedure documents and assistance with training clients’ staff.

She has participated in internal peer reviews and has been featured as a speaker at various health care association conferences on accounting and auditing topics.

Dr. Halliday is an accomplished neurosurgeon who has lectured and published extensively on the treatment of spine disease. She joined PeaceHealth after a successful career in academia and private practice and now serves as its chief clinical officer and the Oregon Network’s chief medical officer. She brings an exquisite attention to detail and patient focus to her leadership of PeaceHealth’s system-wide quality and patient safety programs.

Dr. Halliday graduated from Harvard Medical School and completed her residency in neurosurgery at Massachusetts General Hospital and a fellowship in reconstructive and complex spine surgery at the University of New Mexico.

Bonnie Jacobson is a director in Moss Adams Health Care Practice. She began her career in 1997 as a clinical social worker in the state of California. She became immersed in lean in 2010 while working at California Pacific Medical Center, where she was selected for the inaugural class within the Quality Delivery Promotion Office (QDPO). She worked with the medical center to plan, implement, and facilitate kaizen workshops and events for emergency departments on four campuses to align with A3-T objectives, and to support executive leadership goals. As a member of the Quality Delivery System faculty, she also taught lean modules and developed QDPO promotional materials.

She served as a principal at Rona Consulting Group (RCG) until it combined with Moss Adams in 2017. RCG’s founders were early adopters of the Toyota Management System in the health care setting.

Brian Conner is at Partner at Moss Adams and National Practice Leader for the Hospitals Practice. He has practiced public accounting since 1993, providing audit, tax, and consulting services to integrated health systems, hospitals, ancillary providers, mental and convalescent health facilities, and medical groups. He is a member of the firm’s Executive Committee. He also performs technical reviews for health care clients in the firm and has served as an instructor and lecturer for the firm’s Health Care Group.

Cassie McAllister is the health systems consultant for Marquis Companies. She has worked in health care for more than 20 years, including experience as a skilled nursing administrator. The methods and ideas she recommends and uses in her role are rooted in business reality and data analytics.

She joined the company in 2004, serving first as administrator at Marquis Silver Gardens. Her enthusiasm and natural aptitude for marketing and collaboration didn’t go unnoticed, and in 2006, she accepted the opportunity to share her expertise company-wide. She now assists Marquis’ 22 post-acute rehab and assisted living facilities, its home health business line, its long-term insurance plan, AgeRight, as well as rehab and pharmacy customers of Consonus Healthcare.

A humorous and engaging speaker, her focus is always on practical collaboration and real time data analytics. In one of her most popular presentations, she helps administrators and hospital C-suite learn to build census by building stronger relationships with physicians, managed care organizations, and other referral sources.

She was born in Kansas and holds a bachelor’s degree in social psychology and anthropology from Olivet College. She has two young, active children. She’s also active with the Vital Life Foundation and volunteers at her children’s schools, as well as with the Salem Child Development Center.

Cynthia Chiarappa is vice president of administration and chief of staff to the CEO for University of California San Francisco (UCSF) Health, where she oversees the organization’s lean transformation and strategy deployment. She has more than 25 years of health care administration experience including leading and influencing large cultural transformations. While her early career is grounded in strategic planning, communications, and marketing, her passion for lean thinking and systems stems from her belief that a brand is only as good as the frontline people delivering on the brand promise. Through lean strategy deployment and a strong management system, health care organizations can continually improve to deliver the safest care possible and create better places to work. A large part of her current work focuses on developing strong leaders to be humble and curious.

Prior to joining UCSF, she was vice president of strategy at UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospital Oakland, where she introduced and built a lean transformation culture. Before that, she was senior director of marketing and communications at California Pacific Medical Center in San Francisco. She began her career working for managed vision care benefit plans at LensCrafters in Cincinnati, Ohio, and at Vision Service Plan in Sacramento, California. She has a master of business administration degree with a concentration in marketing and lectures internationally on lean in health care, strategy deployment, and leadership development, frequently for the Tuscan health region in Pisa, Italy. She is certified in lean for health care, is a fellow in the American College of Healthcare Executives and has received many awards and recognitions for her marketing and brand campaigns.

Darby Brockette is the chief executive officer of ClearSky Health. He has more than 30 years of leadership and health care management experience, including responsibility for operation of multiple rehabilitative and long-term acute care hospitals in the United States and Australia. He’s been passionate about health care since he was an undergraduate in college and takes pride in bringing together the best teams possible to provide quality rehabilitative and post-acute services to patients and communities. He has a bachelor’s degree in rehabilitation science from University of Texas Health Center, Dallas and a master’s degree in health care administration from Southwest Texas State University, San Marcos, Texas.

Emily McGinty focuses on investments in health care companies in North America at TA Associates, one of the largest and most experienced global growth private equity firms. She serves on the board of directors of Behavioral Health Works and Healix. Prior to joining TA in 2007, she worked in the Consumer, Health Care, and Retail Group at JPMorgan Securities. She received a BA degree, summa cum laude, in economics from Boston College and MBA from the Stanford Graduate School of Business. She previously served on the Head’s Council for Hathaway Brown.

Eric Klein is a partner and team leader of Sheppard Mullin's national health care practice. He focuses his practice on the health care, technology, and related industries. Known in the business community for his creative solutions and deal-making ability, he uses industry knowledge, entrepreneurial solutions, sophisticated negotiation skills, and effective legal process to meet the complex business and legal needs of established and emerging companies.

He’s advised on more than 60% of all major managed care physician group transactions in the Western United States in the past five years. He represents physician groups, hospitals, health plans, ancillary service providers, and private equity and strategic investors. He works with publicly traded and privately held companies and advises for-profit and not-for-profit clients on mergers and acquisitions (M&A), strategic alliances and joint ventures, operational and contracting matters, strategic planning, health maintenance organization (HMO) licensing and compliance, regulatory matters, and IT transactions.

He’s led 60 hospital purchase or sale and joint venture projects in the last 13 years and has worked on hospital networks, conversion of not-for-profit hospitals into for-profit hospitals, credit facilities for hospitals, establishment and acquisition of outpatient treatment centers, outsourcing of hospital departments, and hospital syndications. He’s also assisted with payor contracting and disputes, governmental investigations and licensing, hospital-physician contracts and joint ventures, and revenue cycle management projects. In addition, he has deep experience in health care information systems and technology.

He’s helped to create, acquire, joint venture, and operate multiple health plans across the country. He’s led more than 30 health plan M&A projects in recent years. He’s also been working on innovative payor and provider initiatives to create downstream global risk-bearing entities. In the area of Knox-Keene HMO regulation, he’s working on multiple Knox-Keene applications. His firm represents half of all currently licensed restricted Knox-Keene HMO license holders in California, and obtained a majority of all restricted Knox-Keene health plan licenses granted in California in the past three years. He’s assisted Knox-Keene plans with licensure issues, compliance and corrective action plans, restructuring, acquisitions and disposition of plans, holding company structures, and credit facilities.

He’s been recognized as a leading healthcare lawyer in Best Lawyers in America, National Law Journal as a 2018 M&A Trailblazer, Chambers USA Guide to Leading Lawyers, 2019 Lawdragon 500 Leading Lawyers in America Guide, Legal 500, Law360—twice named as Health Care Law National MVP, and Los Angeles Business Journal as Most Influential M&A Advisor.

Kamal Jemmoua is currently the CEO and COO for Universal Health Services, Inc.’s (UHS) health plan, Prominence Health Plan, and UHS ACO executive. He’s primarily responsible for the turnaround, restructuring, and growth of the health plan as a population health vehicle in UHS markets. He’s led numerous initiatives for UHS related to value-based care–most notably the acquisition and expansion of Prominence Health Plan Commercial, Medicare Advantage, and third-party administrator services and continued development of six Medicare Shared Savings Program (MSSP) accountable care organizations (ACOs) across UHS acute care markets.

In his tenure with UHS, he’s held various roles driving value-based initiatives under the president of acute care including the health plan acquisition, turnaround, and expansion; MSSP ACO development and operationalization; cervical intraepithelial neoplasia (CIN) development; and bundled payments. Specifically, under Prominence Health Plan, he’s held a permanent role as COO and interim roles as the vice president of network management, CFO, and more recently CEO. He’s responsible for successfully driving restructuring of the health plan and losses in the high double digit millions to breakeven, launched a Medicare Advantage line of business in Nevada and Texas, and restructured the health plan—developing network management; analytics; performance improvement for risk adjustment and Students Thriving, Achieving, and Recognizing Success (STARS) departments; and outsourcing of key services.

Prior to joining UHS, he held various positions working in risk management, investment management, and analytics for Delphi Financial Group and SEI Investments.

He received his BS in finance and economics from LeTourneau University and MS in finance from Villanova University, holds his CPA license, and private pilot license.

Ken Leonczyk is an executive partner and international spokesperson for The Advisory Board. In this role, he advises health systems and health care industry companies on the strategic implications of health care reform, financing, and performance management. He’s been a featured legal and policy expert on national radio and television shows, and previously co-hosted a Sirius/XM talk show. He previously worked as a regulatory and investigations attorney at Covington & Burling LLP in New York and Washington, D.C., and has experience in private practice and public service, both in the United States and internationally. In public service, he served as senior staff in the US House of Representatives and as an Episcopal priest and Anglican Canon.

He was given the Episcopal (Anglican) Church title of Canon for his work in health care and education access in South Sudan and Kenya. He has also lectured and taught classes and colloquia at Yale University, Oxford University, and Southern Methodist University. He holds a JD from Yale Law School, a master’s of arts in religion from Yale Divinity School, and a graduate certificate in Anglican (Episcopal) Studies from Berkeley Divinity School at Yale University. He received his bachelor’s degree in English literature from The University of the South: Sewanee.

Kevin Cable is cofounder and managing director of Cascadia Capital. He founded the firm’s efforts in health care and digital health, drawing from a deep history in software, analytics, big data, and consumer applications. He’s also responsible for cultivating strategic relationships for the firm.

He focuses on a broad spectrum of transactions that include equity private placements, merger and acquisition mandates, recapitalizations, and buyouts. Having built a career split equally between operating companies and investment banking, he brings a grounded and balanced perspective to help companies achieve their transaction goals. He maintains that making payroll is an experience everyone should achieve at least once in their life.

Prior to cofounding Cascadia, he served 14 years on the executive teams of several technology companies, including Numera Software, which he cofounded and led as CEO. He currently serves on the board of directors for the Washington Research Foundation and formerly served as a director of the Washington Software Alliance, the Washington State Technology Alliance, the Alliance of Angels, Innovate Washington Foundation, and several private technology companies.

He holds a BS in cell and molecular biology from the University of Washington. He resides in Spokane, Washington.

Larry Altman is a lead consultant at Premera Blue Cross, a health plan serving more than 2 million people–from individuals and families to members for Fortune 100 employer groups. He is a health care executive, strategic advisor, and thought leader on health policy and system transformation and collaborator for private and public health care organizations working together to succeed. His recent work has included developing primary care strategies and initiatives with NYC Health + Hospitals, the New York State Department of Health, and Horizon Blue Cross Blue Shield of New Jersey. Previously, he was a partner at Booz Allen Hamilton—now Strategy &, part of the PwC network.

He is a graduate of Yale School of Management and Princeton University, where he studied economics and was a teaching assistant to Professor Uwe Reinhardt. He recently relocated from New York City to Seattle with his wife and youngest son.

Lawrence Vernaglia is a partner and health care lawyer with Foley & Lardner LLP, where he’s the chair for the firm’s Industry Teams Department and responsible for overall strategy and leadership across all industry teams. Prior to that, he served eight years as chair of the firm’s Health Care Industry Team and Health Care Practice.

He represents hospitals, health systems, and academic medical centers, and a variety of other health care providers. His practice involves regulatory and transactional matters, including Medicare and Medicaid reimbursement compliance advice and appeals; mergers, acquisitions, and financings; state regulatory issues including licensing, change of ownership, and certificate of need (CON) and determination of need (DON); survey and certification appeals; fraud and abuse and Stark Law analyses; managed care contracting; and general corporate and business planning in health care. He runs strategic planning programs for senior management and governing boards.

He’s the past co-chair of the Boston Bar Association's Health Law Committee. He serves on the editorial boards of The Report on Medicare Compliance, Journal of Nursing Administration’s (JONA) Journal of Healthcare Law, Ethics, & Regulation; and Medicine & Health/Rhode Island. He’s one of nine members of the Medical Economics' Board of Legal Editorial Consultants and for several years, he’s served as chair of Massachusetts’ Continuing Law Education’s (MCLE) comprehensive Health Law Basics program and the advanced Health Law Conference. He’s involved with several not-for-profit organizations as a board member and legal advisor. He’s served as a co-chair of the Health Care Compliance Association’s (HCCA) northeast regional annual meeting for the past decade.

Lisa Hynes is vice president of AgeRight Care Management Solutions. She has spent the majority of her professional life in managed care. From her first position with a small health maintenance organization (HMO) in Salem, Oregon, her career has included stops at Regence BlueCross BlueShield of Oregon and Legacy Health. She spent 12 years with Health Net Health Plan of Oregon, where she served as provider relations manager, provider contracting manager, and most recently, vice president of provider network management.

Currently, she oversees AgeRight Health Plan, Clinical Services, and Post-Acute Care Network. She’s responsible for driving transformative changes to miscellaneous charge order (MCO) payment methodologies and billing and payment efficiency. She also oversees coordinating hospital health system relationships as new post-acute care solutions and alternative payment models are developed.

While working with Marquis Companies leadership in contract negotiations over the years, she developed an appreciation for the company’s passion for the people they serve and its commitment to driving innovation and challenging the status quo.

Her charity work includes developing future agriculture leaders through Silverton High School’s Future Farmers of America program, and she served for nine years on the Children’s Cancer Association’s Ambassador Board. She’s also a board member of the Oregon Health Care Finance Management Association (HFMA).

Marnee Pierson Iseman is a partner in Moss Adams Lean Health Care Practice. She has more than 17 years of experience practicing lean health care, and brings firsthand expertise on the application of the Toyota Management System to health care organizations. She serves a wide range of health care clients, from those with ambulatory services to large integrated systems, guiding them on leadership development, kaizen, innovation, and access services. She has received several health care awards and has presented to the health care community nationwide on topics including lean and the Toyota Production System as it applies to ambulatory care, process improvement, patient access, supply and demand, and quality.

Her experience gives her a firsthand perspective of the challenges in transforming health care. She has managed the strategic planning, operations, and financial performance of multiple suburban satellites offering primary, specialty, ancillary, and ambulatory surgery services; department of medicine; department of pediatrics; and ambulatory surgery centers. She understands present day health care challenges, including the obstacles faced by providers in implementing successful electronic health records (EHR) programs. She provided leadership and direction for the accelerated development of EHR with Providence and its ambulatory partners. She has led employed-physician practices across a five-state system including more than 3,100 physicians and advanced practice clinicians.

She was previously on the faculty of the Institute for Health Care Improvement and held roles as chief of community outreach and business development, chief operating officer, and ambulatory vice president for regional medical centers. She served as a principal at Rona Consulting Group (RCG) until it combined with Moss Adams in 2017. RCG’s founders were early adopters of the Toyota Management System in the health care setting.

Paul Holden is partner at Moss Adams and leads the Cost Reimbursement Practice within Health Care Consulting and specializes in regulatory reporting. He has more than 15 years of experience providing reimbursement consulting and business assurance related services to health care providers in acute and postacute settings throughout the western United States.

His areas of specialties include Medicare and Medicaid reimbursement strategies; assisting clients during third-party audits; formulating appeals of audit issues in connection with cost reports; and assisting skilled nursing facilities, hospitals, health systems, sole community hospitals, critical access hospitals, rural health clinics, and federally qualified health centers with billing and reimbursement issues. He continually explores the role of Medicare cost report and claims data in the federal rate setting processes and Medicare cost report data-mining and benchmarking.

He is a frequent presenter for health care trade and lobbying groups. His topics range from federal and state regulatory updates to facilitating discussions between leadership and directors on strategic financial and reimbursement related issues.

Ryan Schmid is co-founder, president, and CEO of Vera Whole Health, a national leader in advanced primary care. His early work focused on community development, founding a not-for-profit community center, Rainier Health and Fitness, and a not-for-profit medical clinic, Hope Central Pediatric and Behavior Health, as well as leading the development of an affordable housing apartment building.

In 2008, he launched Vera Fitness, a boutique health studio, on the premise that empathetic listening could not only help unlock a person’s natural inclination to improve their health through behavior change but also be the driving force behind a successful business.

In 2012, drawing on what he’d learned through his work with low-income and marginalized communities—namely that the current healthcare system is ill-equipped to address social determinants of health—Schmid pivoted the studio into Vera Whole Health. In doing so, he combined behavior change with primary care, building a new model of advanced primary care uniquely designed to help people achieve optimum social, psychological, and physical well-being.

Dr. Tom Schrup is the executive vice president and chief physician officer at CentraCare, a health system with 13,000 employees serving Central Minnesota. As a pediatrician at CentraCare for 25 years, Dr. Schrup has served in a number of leadership roles while continuing his practice serving families across Minnesota.

Dr. Schrup co-led CentraCare’s Our Best Begins with Me culture transformation as the organization aimed to set a new standard for employees working together in meaningful ways. He also volunteers in his community, providing wellness visits and consults to homeless youth at Pathways 4 Youth, a newly opened resource center that serves youth ages 16-23 experiencing homelessness in the St. Cloud area. Dr. Schrup also serves as medical director for the St. Joseph Fire Department and is a member of the St. Cloud Rotary Club.

Dr. Schrup earned his BS and MD degrees from the University of Iowa and completed his pediatric residency at the University of Wisconsin. He earned his MBA at the University of Colorado, Denver.